-
The VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX is LIVE! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Sagiro's Story Hour Returns (new thread started on 5/18/08)
- Thread starter Sagiro
- Start date
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
Sagiro said:
Sagiro, there are a very few times when I've read an episode in a book and got 'choked up' on the emotion in it. This is the first time I ever remember feeling that way about a Storyhour. It is perfect writing of a situation with genuine emotion, and I salute you.
Cheers
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
spyscribe said:
I have a terrible memory for avatars, but were you the TV evangelist who went mad up on Blood Rock?
Ah, evil days
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
To Plane Sailing and LightPhoenix: it warms my heart to know I've managed to convey, at least to someone, the lump-in-throat, heart-pounding feeling I had at the table as Step was taking his step through the Black Door. I know I'm not supposed to grow attached to my NPC's, but that was an emotional run for me -- both for Step's plot arc, and for the fact that I was about to enact one of the most complex single scenes (in terms of number of actors) that I had ever tried to pull off. (The Battle of Verdshane was bigger, though I don't know if it counts as "a single scene.")
I've just finished transcribing from tape what happened on the other side of the Black Door. I'm probably not spoiling it to say that it involved some combat. Because of the huge number of participants, and the length of the whole scene, I don't think it will work for me to provide the usual round-by-round narrative of who did what. I'll have to think about the best way to present it all, and that may take me a while longer. No promises, but I'm guessing I'll start resolving this cliffhanger with a post in the next few days. A whole bunch of cool stuff happened beyond the Black Door, both in terms of cool PC tactics, and horrific enemy abilities. (Morningstar's player called me "a sick, sick bastard." I have it on tape!) It was hugely fun for me to relive it. I hope I can convey that. Hm.
-Sagiro
I've just finished transcribing from tape what happened on the other side of the Black Door. I'm probably not spoiling it to say that it involved some combat. Because of the huge number of participants, and the length of the whole scene, I don't think it will work for me to provide the usual round-by-round narrative of who did what. I'll have to think about the best way to present it all, and that may take me a while longer. No promises, but I'm guessing I'll start resolving this cliffhanger with a post in the next few days. A whole bunch of cool stuff happened beyond the Black Door, both in terms of cool PC tactics, and horrific enemy abilities. (Morningstar's player called me "a sick, sick bastard." I have it on tape!) It was hugely fun for me to relive it. I hope I can convey that. Hm.
-Sagiro
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
A short update, to set the scene.
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 249
The One in the Lightless Room
There is a place...
No. No there isn’t. To assign it the term ‘place’ is to grant an undeserved grounding in reality. 'Dimension' is a better term. Or maybe ‘frame of reference.’ ‘Madness’ is also close to the mark. Planar scholars have arrived at a term that implies nothing because nothing is what they know.
The Far Realms.
There are beings in the Far Realms, and ‘madness’ would be good term for those as well. They dwell in the dark reaches beyond the borders of the multiverse, bizarre tentacled things thinking unfathomable thoughts. It is extremely fortunate that these creatures have little interest, under normal circumstances, in the affairs of men.
Since names make things easier, we'll call one of these beings ‘Fgogl.’ Fgogl is old even for a denizen of the Far Realms, a huge, drifting presence in a gibbering void. The material world would have been better off had it never attracted the attention of Fgogl, but it's too late now for that. First there was the Chamber, and now... something else. Floating, squirming, Fgogl bumped against a strange material construct, a web of connected planes from the Other Side, lodged like a tumor in the fabric of the Far Reams.
Fgogl was annoyed.
Through a century of studious observation, Fgogl found the source of the tumor, a blue speck of concentrated power. Fgogl was troubled. This speck was leaking, pulsing, emanating...and growing. It was an irritant. Worse, Fgogl could not discern a way to be rid of it, or the growth it was fueling. Only when something disturbed the web from inside could parts of it be eradicated, but that was infrequent, and its rate of expansion was troublingly quick.
The blue cancer had strong defenses that protected its heart. But slightly removed from the heart there was a single aperture through which the tumor was pouring out much of its power, and that, thought Fgogl, was a point of weakness. The mighty creature of the Far Realms thrust a single massive tentacle through the fabric of space, into the section of tumor that housed the opening. Like a twisted antibody it surrounded the aperture, blocking the flow of energy, sealing it from the emptiness of its home. Fgogl exuded an absence of feeling, a paradoxically palpable oblivion that dulled the irritation.
Better.
Lesser beings of the Far Realms were attracted by Fgogl's thoughts and actions. They too extended tentacular extensions of themselves into the cancerous labyrinth, probing, questing in the strange anti-space of the Other Side. Sometimes they found playthings, which they slew. They heard the echoes of Fgogl's ideas, that the Aperture should be guarded while the mighty creature pondered how to be rid of the anomaly for good. Some of the lesser beings worked out a way to imbue life and thought to their playthings, though they were puppets that still needed a will to move them. And while these would die, there were always more arriving, more puppets, so fragile – playthings dying in the dark.
* *
Ten seconds.
The assembled heroes finish up the last of their preparatory spells, and ten seconds after watching One Certain Step vanish into the Black Door, they follow. The first sensation they have is a familiar one, of being pulled through a dark void from one Slice to the next. Then they are emerging, and sensation, for the most part, ceases.
Beyond the Black Door there is no sight. There is no sound. There is no sense of temperature, and the air, if it exists, carries no scent. They may be standing on solid ground but there’s no way to be sure – it’s possible they’re in freefall. Some of the heroes are imbued with true seeing or greater arcane sight, but their augmented perceptions are utterly foiled. (Or maybe they work perfectly, and there’s nothing to experience.) Only the connections of several interlaced telepathic bonds provide assurance to each of the group that they have not been separated into individual Slices. All thoughts are on One Certain Step, and what awaits them in the dark.
Time passes. No one knows how much. It might be a second, a minute, an hour.
There is a sound, coming as if from far away. It’s a shock to hear it, and though no one can identify it, the sensation returns the ability to measure time. Over the next two seconds the sound grows louder, and as they realize it’s a human scream, a tiny glowing spot appears.
The point of light provides spatial reference, just as the sound provides a temporal one. They think the light is many dozens of feet out from them, and just as high in the air. Another two seconds, and the light grows along with the sound. It’s a heart-rending scream of pain, and they know the voice. The light flares to the brightness of a strong lantern, revealing a human silhouette hanging high up, light spilling out of it. The scream grows louder, and they catch the glint of a sword as it falls from the silhouette’s hand. The blade falls out of the range of the light, and if it strikes ground it makes no noise.
WHOOOOOOOSH! A sun is kindled high in the air, revealing that they are standing in a huge stone cavern, a hundred feet across and nearly as high, and filled with – no, not yet. Everyone’s eyes are drawn to the center of that sun, where a body is suspended in the air.
It’s held there by a pair of long tentacles. One protrudes from a wall of the cavern, and is wrapped around the body’s torso. The second is anchored to the ceiling and grips the body’s legs. As the heroes below watch in horror, the two tentacles casually finish pulling One Certain Step apart. The paladin’s dying scream ends abruptly. The light of his soul does not.
The cavern is flooded with brilliant radiance, and it reveals... horrors. A crazed fear beats at the minds of the Company and their allies. They know that without the lingering effects of the heroes’ feast they would be mad with terror. Even so, there is no mistaking the disquieting wrongness of Cleaners, permeating the air like poison.
In the light of Step’s sacrifice, there is no mistaking the source.
All sensation has come rushing back to them in that radiance. The air is filled with a hissing, rasping, squirming sound, of hundreds of foot-thick tentacles thrusting out from the walls, ceiling and floor of the cavern. The tentacles are quivering crazily, as if whatever they’re attached to behind the stone is being administered an electric shock. It is heartening (the only such thing here) that these myriad tentacles are each kinked, bending sharply away from the center of the new sun.
The rocky, tentacled floor of this room – lightless no longer – is thick with bodies. Everywhere is the glint of armor, weapons, and enchanted gleaming objects too numerous to count. Everyone who came before them to brave this place now lies dead on the ground. But even Dranko and Flicker hardly notice. Like everyone else, their eyes, squinting past Step’s radiance, are on the Trunk.
There’s no better word for it. It’s a tentacle, to be sure, a brownish translucent tentacle like all the rest. But it’s thirty feet in diameter and almost a hundred feet long, vanishing into the rock of both the floor and ceiling of the cavern. Hundreds of smaller tentacles protrude from the Trunk like cilia. At its base, maybe sixty feet from the now-expanded Company, roam two large creatures, living masses of smaller tentacles.
Near ground level, and buried deep in the center of the translucent Trunk, there is a clear blue glow.
“I hate when I’m right,” thinks Grey Wolf.
...to be continued...
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 249
The One in the Lightless Room
There is a place...
No. No there isn’t. To assign it the term ‘place’ is to grant an undeserved grounding in reality. 'Dimension' is a better term. Or maybe ‘frame of reference.’ ‘Madness’ is also close to the mark. Planar scholars have arrived at a term that implies nothing because nothing is what they know.
The Far Realms.
There are beings in the Far Realms, and ‘madness’ would be good term for those as well. They dwell in the dark reaches beyond the borders of the multiverse, bizarre tentacled things thinking unfathomable thoughts. It is extremely fortunate that these creatures have little interest, under normal circumstances, in the affairs of men.
Since names make things easier, we'll call one of these beings ‘Fgogl.’ Fgogl is old even for a denizen of the Far Realms, a huge, drifting presence in a gibbering void. The material world would have been better off had it never attracted the attention of Fgogl, but it's too late now for that. First there was the Chamber, and now... something else. Floating, squirming, Fgogl bumped against a strange material construct, a web of connected planes from the Other Side, lodged like a tumor in the fabric of the Far Reams.
Fgogl was annoyed.
Through a century of studious observation, Fgogl found the source of the tumor, a blue speck of concentrated power. Fgogl was troubled. This speck was leaking, pulsing, emanating...and growing. It was an irritant. Worse, Fgogl could not discern a way to be rid of it, or the growth it was fueling. Only when something disturbed the web from inside could parts of it be eradicated, but that was infrequent, and its rate of expansion was troublingly quick.
The blue cancer had strong defenses that protected its heart. But slightly removed from the heart there was a single aperture through which the tumor was pouring out much of its power, and that, thought Fgogl, was a point of weakness. The mighty creature of the Far Realms thrust a single massive tentacle through the fabric of space, into the section of tumor that housed the opening. Like a twisted antibody it surrounded the aperture, blocking the flow of energy, sealing it from the emptiness of its home. Fgogl exuded an absence of feeling, a paradoxically palpable oblivion that dulled the irritation.
Better.
Lesser beings of the Far Realms were attracted by Fgogl's thoughts and actions. They too extended tentacular extensions of themselves into the cancerous labyrinth, probing, questing in the strange anti-space of the Other Side. Sometimes they found playthings, which they slew. They heard the echoes of Fgogl's ideas, that the Aperture should be guarded while the mighty creature pondered how to be rid of the anomaly for good. Some of the lesser beings worked out a way to imbue life and thought to their playthings, though they were puppets that still needed a will to move them. And while these would die, there were always more arriving, more puppets, so fragile – playthings dying in the dark.
* *
Ten seconds.
The assembled heroes finish up the last of their preparatory spells, and ten seconds after watching One Certain Step vanish into the Black Door, they follow. The first sensation they have is a familiar one, of being pulled through a dark void from one Slice to the next. Then they are emerging, and sensation, for the most part, ceases.
Beyond the Black Door there is no sight. There is no sound. There is no sense of temperature, and the air, if it exists, carries no scent. They may be standing on solid ground but there’s no way to be sure – it’s possible they’re in freefall. Some of the heroes are imbued with true seeing or greater arcane sight, but their augmented perceptions are utterly foiled. (Or maybe they work perfectly, and there’s nothing to experience.) Only the connections of several interlaced telepathic bonds provide assurance to each of the group that they have not been separated into individual Slices. All thoughts are on One Certain Step, and what awaits them in the dark.
Time passes. No one knows how much. It might be a second, a minute, an hour.
There is a sound, coming as if from far away. It’s a shock to hear it, and though no one can identify it, the sensation returns the ability to measure time. Over the next two seconds the sound grows louder, and as they realize it’s a human scream, a tiny glowing spot appears.
The point of light provides spatial reference, just as the sound provides a temporal one. They think the light is many dozens of feet out from them, and just as high in the air. Another two seconds, and the light grows along with the sound. It’s a heart-rending scream of pain, and they know the voice. The light flares to the brightness of a strong lantern, revealing a human silhouette hanging high up, light spilling out of it. The scream grows louder, and they catch the glint of a sword as it falls from the silhouette’s hand. The blade falls out of the range of the light, and if it strikes ground it makes no noise.
WHOOOOOOOSH! A sun is kindled high in the air, revealing that they are standing in a huge stone cavern, a hundred feet across and nearly as high, and filled with – no, not yet. Everyone’s eyes are drawn to the center of that sun, where a body is suspended in the air.
It’s held there by a pair of long tentacles. One protrudes from a wall of the cavern, and is wrapped around the body’s torso. The second is anchored to the ceiling and grips the body’s legs. As the heroes below watch in horror, the two tentacles casually finish pulling One Certain Step apart. The paladin’s dying scream ends abruptly. The light of his soul does not.
The cavern is flooded with brilliant radiance, and it reveals... horrors. A crazed fear beats at the minds of the Company and their allies. They know that without the lingering effects of the heroes’ feast they would be mad with terror. Even so, there is no mistaking the disquieting wrongness of Cleaners, permeating the air like poison.
In the light of Step’s sacrifice, there is no mistaking the source.
All sensation has come rushing back to them in that radiance. The air is filled with a hissing, rasping, squirming sound, of hundreds of foot-thick tentacles thrusting out from the walls, ceiling and floor of the cavern. The tentacles are quivering crazily, as if whatever they’re attached to behind the stone is being administered an electric shock. It is heartening (the only such thing here) that these myriad tentacles are each kinked, bending sharply away from the center of the new sun.
The rocky, tentacled floor of this room – lightless no longer – is thick with bodies. Everywhere is the glint of armor, weapons, and enchanted gleaming objects too numerous to count. Everyone who came before them to brave this place now lies dead on the ground. But even Dranko and Flicker hardly notice. Like everyone else, their eyes, squinting past Step’s radiance, are on the Trunk.
There’s no better word for it. It’s a tentacle, to be sure, a brownish translucent tentacle like all the rest. But it’s thirty feet in diameter and almost a hundred feet long, vanishing into the rock of both the floor and ceiling of the cavern. Hundreds of smaller tentacles protrude from the Trunk like cilia. At its base, maybe sixty feet from the now-expanded Company, roam two large creatures, living masses of smaller tentacles.
Near ground level, and buried deep in the center of the translucent Trunk, there is a clear blue glow.
“I hate when I’m right,” thinks Grey Wolf.
...to be continued...
RangerWickett
Legend
I honestly did not expect the guardians of the black door would be the cleaners. After seeing what those bastards did before just by touching Dranko, well . . . this should be cool.
I think the image of a manalone in the darkness, illuminated by his own light as he is slain, will remain with me for quite a while.
I think the image of a manalone in the darkness, illuminated by his own light as he is slain, will remain with me for quite a while.
Similar Threads
